18th December 2012
Oh my! What a difference it made buying a home theatre amp with HDMI input!
I recently took delivery of an Arcam AVR400 and connected it up to my home system. It has auto-calibration built-in which ran very easily. I tried out “Monster vs Aliens” Blu-ray and the audio is sensational. The boxy sound from the front centre channel has gone and the rear channels are clearly audible and very pleasant, adding effect without being intrusive. “Despicable Me” is also really well done on Blu-ray. Ok so…
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26th June 2012
As part of my surround-sound journey, I found out that my Sony Blu-ray player did not, by default, send a DVD DTS sound track out of its S/PDIF digital output to my surround amp; it was converting it to Dolby first. After a detailed hunt through the set-up menu options and changing several settings, I could then get it to send it out unadulterated. To my ears, Moulin Rouge sounded much better in DTS, which it should do given the higher bit-rate. This amount of hassle, however, is no use to the…
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21st May 2012
Ok so I’m still a generation behind and not got to 3D yet, but a conversation with a customer recently confirmed a suspicion I’d had for some time: Blu-ray discs sound much better than DVDs.
When I got my full HD LCD TV and Blu-ray player connected a while back, I noticed the Blu-ray picture quality was much better. I could see eyes glistening properly, crowd scenes with such detail they gained depth, and far less blocky graphics during large, sudden scene changes. Animations like…
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4th April 2012
Taking my colleague's advice to heart, I went to concerts in the Usher Hall in Edinburgh in January and February, after a long absence since its refurbishment in 2009. I was up in the "nose-bleed" seats, which now have the addition of padding over the wood, but only a very thin layer at this ticket price.
I was sat centrally and listening to the Scottish Chamber Orchestra playing Beethoven and Haydn. The orchestra comprised around fifty players, with the addition of a piano at times. It was good…
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12th January 2012
That 3.5mm phone jack! It’s on just about every mobile phone and is a standard size and pretty rugged, but it’s amazing what accessory you can plug in there and a smartphone will recognise it and adapt accordingly. It’s also a challenge for those like Wolfson on the other side of the socket!
People expect to plug in headphones, which have three terminals, and headsets, which use four terminals (one extra for the microphone). They might plug in a lead to connect to their car audio system or home…
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